You've still got it, babe

Six decades after its invention, the skimpiest garment ever
created for women to wear in public refuses to head for cover. The
modern bikini, loved and loathed by women in equal doses, still
reigns supreme as the great Aussie cossie everywhere from Brighton
beach to the Big Brother house.

This iconic piece of apparel, which is as old as the oldest baby
boomer, has gone as low as tan lines can go and still manages to
recruit new followers.

Of course, it was originally a French invention, appropriately
named after an explosive and controversial historic event, the
American nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

French car engineer Louis Reard came up with the revolutionary
two-piece swimsuit in 1946 after taking over his mother's lingerie
company. After boasting that his creation was "smaller than the
smallest bathing suit", Reard couldn't get any nice girls to model
it. It was then that Parisian stripper Micheline Bernardini got the
job as the world's first official bikini babe.

Women did not immediately warm to the idea of baring their
midriffs. The churches staunchly opposed the risque navel-exposing
swimsuit and it was banned in several countries and condemned by
fashion magazines. They were even banned from the Miss World stage
up until 1951.

Victoria had its own bikini pioneer, a young woman by the name
of Paula Stafford, who was ready to fight them on the beaches with
her own two-bit bathers. Born in Willaura, she headed north and in
1947 began stitching the first Australian-made two-piece swimsuits
on the Gold Coast, which remains to this day Australia's spiritual
home of the bikini.

One of her early creations, quite modest by today's standards,
fell foul of a beach inspector when worn by Sydney model Ann
Ferguson in 1952. The media-savvy Stafford seized the opportunity
to confront the morality crusaders and score some free publicity.
She sent five bikini-clad girls to the beach the next day. Then the
orders starting rolling in.

While resisted in conservative American quarters, the flashing
of more flesh was enthusiastically embraced by Hollywood. Bikinis
helped project their early wearers to stardom. Pin-up girls such as
Jayne Mansfield, Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe graced the
bedroom walls of many young men, in poster form.

A memorable bikini film scene could earn an actress eternal sex
siren status, as it did for Brigitte Bardot and Raquel Welch.
Ursula Andress' famous bikini accessorised with a knife belt in Dr
No was replicated by more recent Bond girl Halle Berry in Die
Another Day, earning similar adulation.

They have always had that whiff of scandal about them. Walt
Disney took some time before he reluctantly allowed his star
Annette Funicello to don a bikini brief enough to expose her navel
in the 1960s, at a time when beach movies were hopping with dancing
beauties in two-pieces.

But in recent years, the once shocking navel-gazing that was
once the exclusive domain of the bikini has moved on to dry land.
The midriff has been well and truly exposed by the popularity of
crop tops and low-rise jeans.

The scant coverage of bikinis is still a surefire way to attract
media coverage for the publicity-hungry. On reality shows such as
Big Brother, the bikini is the outfit of choice - sometimes teemed
with Ugg boots - for contestants hopeful of going straight from the
televised Gold Coast compound to the cover of a lad's mag.

Bikinis have an established history of thrusting their shapely
wearers into the limelight for their 15 minutes of fame. Perth
model Jane Priest was a fine example when images of her sporting a
bikini and planting a kiss on Prince Charles in 1979 circulated the
globe.

Not everybody loves bikinis, especially women. That may have a
lot to do with the fact that a woman wearing a bikini can have no
secrets. A bikini is the closest thing to nudity deemed publicly
acceptable, but not everybody wants that level of body
scrutiny.

A major bikini breakthrough occurred in 1974 with the arrival of
Lycra, a fabric that helped hold the body in. But that was no help
when teeny-weeny bikinis proceeded to get itsy-bitsier. The early,
quite modest bikinis gradually eroded over the years, in some cases
to nothing more than three tiny triangles of fabric on the front
while disappearing altogether between the buttocks at the back.
Fortunately, bikinis are acceptable in all shapes and sizes and the
G-string (or "dental floss") bikini now happily co-exists with less
revealing numbers featuring boy-leg pants or shorts and bandeau
tops.

The bikini has boosted other spin-off services, such as bikini
waxing and the tanning industry. In Melbourne's climate the only
way to keep bikini bods bronze is with artificial means of fake
tanning sprays and the less healthy option of solariums.

Curiously, sunglasses have become bigger in recent years as
swimsuits have got smaller, to the point where some now exceed the
size of bikinis worn with them. Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie and
Mischa Barton are staunch exponents of this look.

Bikinis can certainly deliver unwanted exposure, even for
happily overexposed celebrities. This week's NW magazine
cover features unflattering photographs of the bikini-clad rear
ends of three celebrities, including Delta Goodrem, under the cruel
headline "Stars with cellulite".

The celebrity jetset who spend their time migrating around the
world's beach resorts know they are constantly being stalked by
photographers just waiting to catch their less than elegant
"wedgie" moments or bikini-top wardrobe malfunctions should they
dare to enter the water. Women's gossip magazines feature as many
unflattering shots of bikinis as men's mags feature saucy ones.

The bikini's loose association with sport has got looser over
the years. The wearing of a bikini, or perhaps the watching of
them, spectacularly morphed into a high-profile sport of its own
when Sports Illustrated launched its now famous annual
swimsuit issue in 1964, which later generated its own television
show and calendar.

There are big bucks in bikinis. The swimsuit model became an
elite force within supermodel ranks. Elle Macpherson's covers
established her as simply The Body, and the resulting business
ventures catapulted her to The Body corporate.

Beauty pageants are back in fashion following the success of
Miss Universe 2004 Jennifer Hawkins. She is now on The Great
Outdoors, regularly donning bikinis, which is a mandatory
requirement for success as a female travel show presenter.

But bikini shoots can backfire. When Michelle Leslie was found
with ecstasy tablets in Bali and started donning Muslim dress for
court appearances, her past modelling assignments of swimwear and
lingerie came back to haunt her. Bikini shots of Lara "where the
bloody hell are you?" Bingle went straight to the cover of lad
magazine Zoo Weekly after her new role as Australia's
bikini-clad tourism ambassador upset the Brits and hit the
headlines.

Athletes can also have an uneasy relationship with the least
sporting of swimsuits (well, unless you are a beach volleyball
player required to wear one for your sport). When bitter squabbling
broke out before the Commonwealth Games between athletes Jana
Pittman and Tamsyn Lewis, Pittman derided her opponent as "a bikini
babe", a snipe referring to a bikini shoot she had appeared in for
a men's magazine in 2004. Lewis herself expressed shock and
surprise at the uproar caused by the photos. "I was close to
collapse because of the shocking time the press gave me over the
bikini shoot," she said recently.

The raunchy bikinis of rugby league cheerleaders has also caused
controversy with Gymnastics Australia, which ordered clubs to
change their revealing outfits to more modest navel-covering
uniforms after protests.

Nikki Webster recently discovered that war and two pieces do not
mix. The former Olympic opening ceremony child star had to
apologise after teaming a bikini with a helmet and war backdrop for
a racy Anzac Day photo shoot, which she later said was intended to
be a tribute to her grandfather, who went to war.

The skimpy bikini will always be getting in trouble it seems,
but less will always be more for those who want to be noticed. Just
when you think the only way for bikinis to go is to disappear
entirely, they go and get even bigger. In the US, Maxim magazine
recently created a giant vinyl-mesh cover 33 metres wide in the
desert of southern Nevada featuring Desperate Housewives
star Eva Longoria. The magazine boasts it can be seen from space.
What is the world's biggest image of a woman wearing? You guessed
it, an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bikini.